Costly Type Of White Collar Crime example essay topic

In order to understand how law is used to oppress any act of crime and deviance, it is important to first understand the explanations that sociologists have offered for crime and its related concept of deviance. Before even that it is important to know how crime and deviance is defined. Crime is an aspect of social life that affects everyone at some time. To sociologists crime means the breaking of rules that have been made into laws by the rulers or government of a society. Whereas Deviance means behaviour that most or all people disapprove of in the society. Such behaviour will not conform to the society's norms and values.

The main issue related to crime and deviance is how do class, gender, ethnicity and social controls within a capitalistic society lead to increase in crime due to the criminal laws and criminal justice system imposed on the lower middle class. "Social conflict theory" is the most important criminology theory that deals directly with this problem. This approaches has been taken from the traditional Marxism, who believes that capitalist societies exists for the benefit of the owners of capital therefore it has divided the poor and the rich. Marxist analysis of crime is defined as crime from the result of the values, which the ruling classes have forced upon society.

The law reflect and support these values. Laws require workers' rights or controlling corporate crime, which are seen as less important than those controlling the activities of youth in inner- city areas. Therefore policing and public concerns are centred on particular types of crime. People assume that real criminals are those in the inner- cites. They therefore look for the causes of crime in the differences between the normal (middle class) and deviant individuals (lower class, young, male). The law is seen as a reflection of the interests of the powerful in society, and does not exist, as most functionalist claim, to reflect the will and needs of the majority of the population.

There are other sociologists' explanations as to why crime occurs such as The Functionalist theory, where it is suggested by Durkheim that deviance and crime were beneficial to society in two ways. Firstly, crime can bring about social changes by proving a public court where public acceptance of the law is constantly being tested. The second way is that if general disagreement that the law is out of date, and then law is changed. On the other hand, crime can be strengthening social agreement in that it draws people together in mutual horror at particular crimes. A more detailed version of functionalist theory that helps to explain actual behaviour is taken from Merton.

He suggests that all societies set clear goals for people to reach. Societies also give socially improved resources of obtaining these goals. Merton argues that as long as there is seen to be a reasonable chance of achieving success through agreed goals, the society will function well. If, however, there is little chance of success through these goals, then a situation of anomie is created. In this situation, people response to the fact that they have very little chance of achieving social agreed goals by adapting to their situation. For Merton, crime and deviance are the results of the situation of anomie.

Coward and Ohl in, who argue that there is not only a set of socially agreed resources to achieve the society's goal, developed Merton's work. They believed there is also an illegitimate sub culturally agreed set of goals. They suggest that there are also different response to success and failure in this parallel illegitimate opportunity structure. Therefore, he majority of criticisms of Merton has been that there is an assumption that the society has only one commonly hold goal (financial success). It has been pointed out that there are variety of goals held by individuals and different parts of society.

Secondly, it is argued that Merton ignored real issues of power, as to who sets the goals, who benefits from the success and failure. In capitalist society, success is measured in terms of ownership and status. For Marxists, greed is therefore the basis of capital society. For those with access to means of success are more likely to successes and greed is seen as a positive thing. However for those with little, crime is one of the ways in which they too can succeed. This is similar in many ways to Merton's theory of anomie, however Merton sees this situation as evidence of an abnormal capitalist society, Marxists see it as the very nature of normal capitalist society.

For example, in "Policing the Crisis", Hall (Traditional Marxist) studied the rapid growth in street crime in the 1970's and the police response to it. At that time there was great concern over the increase in the street robberies (mugging); and the response of public and politicians was demanded that the police do something about it. Hall suggests that moral panics (muggers, football hooligans, poll tax rioters) occur as change during the crises of capitalism and they justify increases in social control measures. Similarly, in Box's "Power, Crime and Mystification", argues that crime committed by corporations is excluded from the process of criminalization, by which he means that the city, where large amount of fraud and illegal trading activities take place, is hardly policed at all. He also suggests that the social control function of the police is of special importance. The police act as a "front line" mechanism of oppression.

In times of political crises e.g. the miner's strike, the urban riots of 1981, the police are given greater freedom to act against subordinate groups. "Much police behaviors seems most easily explained when one considers that whenever there is a conflict of interests between the dominant classes in a society and less powerful groups, the police protect the interests of the former and regulate the behaviors of the latter". (Galli her, 1971) Sutherland created the term "White Collar Crime" in 1939. He argued that white-collar crime is crime, which involves a betrayal of trust implied in the holding of an office or other position of trust. Persons of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation commit it.

A greater threat to society than street crime Sutherland used the term "white-collar crime" in order to point out weaknesses in typical crime theory that considered social pathology as the primary explanation behind criminal behavior. White-collar crime spread doubt on the view that poverty breads crime. Sutherland argued that members of society occupying positions of privilege and status were just as likely to commit crimes as those from the lower classes. Sutherland's call to study white-collar crime marked a major shift in the focus of criminological inquiry.

Later on in 1997 Appel baum and Chambliss defined white-collar crime as two main types. The first type is the "Occupational crime", which occurs when crimes are committed to promote personal interests. Crimes that fall into this category include altering books by accountants and overcharging or cheating clients by lawyers. The second type is the "Organizational or Corporate Crime", this is a much more costly type of white-collar crime.

It occurs when corporate executives commit criminal acts to benefit their company. There are a variety of corporate crimes that include the creation of inferior products, pollution, and price fixing. One might also include tobacco companies that add nicotine to cigarettes or when companies advertise food as "low calorie" when it has as many calories as regular food. However White-Collar Offenders seem to avoid harsh punishment, this is because those responsible for the criminal justice system are afraid to enforce the law due to status of offenders. Also because a long history exists of soft punishment for white-collar offenders and the society in the area of white-collar crime do not attack most white-collar crimes (accepted business practices). For Marxists, the state, which makes the law, represents (directly or indirectly) the interests of the ruling class.

Law is a coercive instrument of the state, used to maintain the existing social order. There are a number of examples of the way law serves the interest of the ruling class: Chambliss (1976) points to the large number of laws relating to property. ".. the heart of a capitalist economy is the protection of private property... it is not surprising to find that criminal laws reflect this basic concern". The Traditional Marxist approaches can be greatly crit ised as it stress on the context and structure of crime, which limits the analysis of individuals' explanations and motivates. Also the explanation that all crime is the result of the interests of the ruling class leads Marxist writers into circular explanations. All crime is the result of the ruling class looking after its own interests, therefore when Marxists study crime they start from this assumption and look for the possible benefits from any law or police activity that accrue to the ruling classes.

They ignore other potential explanations and therefore are bound to find the benefits they are looking for. To conclude some sociologists have come to the conclusion that criminal law categories are ideological constructs designed to criminalise only some behaviors, usually those committed by the relatively powerless, and to exclude others, usually those frequently committed by the powerful against subordinates. Criminal law categories are resources, tools, instruments, designed and then used to criminalise, demoralize and sometimes eliminate those problem populations perceived by the powerful to be potentially or actually threatening the existing distribution of power, wealth or privilege. However, not every criminal law represents the interests of the ruling class. Some laws are passed purely as symbolic success, which the dominant class grants, to inferior interest groups, basically to keep them quiet; once passed they need never be efficiently enforced. Occasionally organized subordinate groups force the ruling class into tactical retreat but these successes are short lived.

Powerful groups have ways and means of clawing back the rewards of planned defeats. In the last instance, definitions of crime reflect the interests of those groups who include the ruling class. Some criminal laws are in all our interests. For example none of us wants to be murdered, wants our property stolen in that sense criminal law are in all of our interests. However, this is not all the truth as some groups of people benefit more than others from these laws. It is not that they are less likely to be murdered, raped etc-although the best evidence shows this to be true-but that in the criminal law, definitions of murder, rape, theft and other serious crimes are so created as to exclude many similar acts, and these are just the acts likely to be committed more frequently by powerful individuals.

The criminal law defines only some types of unnecessary killing as murder; it excludes, for example, deaths resulting from acts of negligence, such as employers failure to maintain safe working conditions; or deaths which result from governmental agencies giving environmental health risks a low priority; or deaths resulting from drug manufacturers failure to conduct enough research; or deaths from a dangerous drug that was approved by health authorities on the strength of a bribe; or deaths resulting from car manufacturers refusing to recall defective vehicles because they calculate that the costs of meeting civil damages will be less. We are encouraged to see murder as a particular act involving a very limited range of stereotypical actors, instruments, situations and motives. Other types of unnecessary killing are either defined as a less serious crime, or as matters more appropriate for civil proceedings, it may be just a strange accident that the social characteristics of those persons more likely to commit these types of avoidable killings differs considerably to those obsessed by individuals more likely to commit killings legally defined as murder. The criminal law sees only some types of property deprivation as robbery or theft, it excludes, for example, manufacturer's delinquency or advertiser's misrepresentation; it excludes shareholders losing money because managers behaved in ways that benefited only themselves; it excludes the extra tax citizens have to pay because the wealthy are able to avoid tax, or because drug companies overcharge the NHS.

If an employee's hand slips into the boss's pocket and removes any spare cash, that is theft; if the boss puts his hand into the employee's pockets and takes their spare cash by reducing wages even below the legal minimum, that is the labour market operating reasonably. Thus criminal laws the criminal law includes only one type of non-consensual sexual act as rape. It excludes sexual intercourse between husband and wife (not now though). It excludes sexual acts achieved by fraud, dishonesty or misrepresentation.

It excludes men who use economic or social power rather than force. The outcome is that men who have few resources other than physical ones are more likely to commit legally defined rape. Against murder, rape, robbery and assault do protect us all but they do not protect us all equally. They do not protect the less powerful from being killed, sexually exploited, deprived of what little liberty they possess, or being physically or psychologically damaged through the greed, negligence and unaccountability of the relatively more powerful.

From this it can be said that while some laws protect us all, they do not protect us all equally. "Criminal laws against murder, rape, robbery and assault do protect us all but they do not protect the less powerful from being killed, sexually exploited, deprived of their property, or physically and psychologically damaged through the greed, apathy, negligence, indifference and the unaccountability of the relatively more powerful". (This 1978) This theory can also be applied to other issues such as gender, ethnicity, where law can be unfair or caution to certain groups when punishing them. For example, there are over 2000 women in prison in Britain, a huge increase over the last 20 years. The vast majority is in prison for non- violent offences, often for not paying fines so that they had money to look after their children. From this it can be argued that the police and the criminal justice system may treat women more leniently.

It is suggested that the police are more likely to caution rather than charge women and that the courts are likely to give lighter sentences, especially if the woman has or is expecting children. Whereas in a man's trial it is not usually considered relevant. This idea has been taken from traditional British culture that men should protect the women. To sum up it can be said that the criminal justice system can work if the people in control of it are fair and equal to everyone..